RIYADH, 18 January 2008 — Article 9 of the Saudi Basic System of Governance states that the family is the “nucleus of Saudi society,” but increasingly this nucleus is split by divorce. A summit on the subject that took place this past week in Riyadh had experts citing statistics, studies and personal estimates on just how many Saudis see their marriages collapse.
In his inaugural address of Wednesday’s summit, Minister of Social Affairs Abdul Mohsen Al-Akkas said, “Society is passing through a disturbing state because of the rise in the divorce rate compared to the number of marriages.”
While everyone attending the summit agreed that divorce is a growing phenomenon in the Kingdom, the estimates given by these experts varied, sometimes greatly.
Hammad Al-Hammadi, assistant professor of social services, Imam Muhammad ibn Saud University, said that 65 percent of the breakups occur in the first year of marriage, while 35 percent take place before the third year.
However, this figure contradicts the numbers given at a seminar that took place in April 2007 at King Saud Girls College that claimed 46 percent of divorces occur in the first three years of marriage. That seminar also concluded that 44 percent of marriages begin to crumble after the first year and that 65 percent of all divorced Saudis are under the age of 35.
“Two hundred and fifty thousand divorce cases were registered from 1997 until 2007,” said Al-Hammadi during Wednesday’s summit. This figure implies that an average of 25,000 divorces occur in Saudi Arabia per year, or 68 divorces per day.
But Salwa Al-Khateeb, who has a PhD in anthropology and was also present at Wednesday’s summit, gave a considerably lower figure than Al-Hammadi’s.
“There are three divorces a day in Saudi Arabia,” she said.
Last year the Ministry of Planning reported that there were 12,192 divorces the previous year, or about 33 a day, compared to approximately 70,000 marriages.
Some experts at the summit didn’t provide actual figures, but — drawing from their own experience — gave estimates for the rate of growth.
Saleh Al-Romaih, who has a PhD in sociology and is the editor of Al-Adab magazine, estimates that between 1425H (2004-2005) until 1426H (2005-2006) the divorce rate doubled. He also said he researched the likelihood of divorced Saudi women being able to remarry and found that “63 percent of young men expressed their reluctance to marry a divorcee.”
Despite the fact that attendees of Wednesday’s summit seemed to be coming with their own estimates and numbers, all agree that divorce is a present and growing social issue.
Mohammad Al-Moqrin, secretary-general of Al-Tayyar Philanthropic Institute, which specializes in marital counseling, said that the government should be open to receiving criticism from the people in its effectiveness in tackling social problems that lead to divorce.
“We should not be sensitive to criticism,” he said. “The wellbeing of our society is what motivates me, and I hereby establish positive criticism.”
Nora Al-Alsheikh, the head of the Social Affairs office in Makkah, says that “emotional divorce” can be more harmful than the actual divorce. Should women want divorce they are required to return the dowries they received, putting them under often-restrictive financial obligations. “And even after divorce, some women stay under the husband’s thumb, if he refuses to hand in divorce papers or the children’s documentations,” she said.
Such bureaucratic hurdles can, for example, prevent women from remarrying and keep children out of school on the whims of the ex-husband, who often harbors bitter feelings that dissuade him further from acting to release his wife from his clutches and control.
The summit recommended that more support be given to married couples in attempts to preserve their marriages. It also stressed the necessity to provide pre-marital counseling for betrothed couples so they know what to expect, for better or worse. Some have called for requiring marriage counseling prior to marriage.
